The Barrister:
I’m glad he/she could give you an answer you either wanted to hear, or found acceptable to your view of Catholic theology.
But it’s not consistent with Catholic doctrine.
I thought you wanted something out of Catholic theology. I stand corrected. Peace.
Barrister, while I agree with you, I’ve gotta say that you a quite caustic in you’re replies buddy! I think you’re doing a little baiting yourself. I’m tired of all of the threads I participate in getting closed :banghead: The next thing that’s going to happen is that Tar will come back with some annoyed response (if it hasn’t happened as I type) and then somebody who hates to see people fighting will run to the moderator and the thread will be shut down.
Tar, this statement is leading toward Relativism:
i think and see and feel things that may or may not go 100% along with the doctrines and according to my priest thats ok God made me that way.
It is quite fine to not understand the Church’s teachings. Heck, I don’t understand them all. However, it is not OK to not go along with the Church’s teachings on Faith and Morals. If your priest told you that was fine to not go along with Church teachings because God made you this way then he is wrong. Take Adam and Eve for example. God gave them rules to follow and they blew it. I don’t think “you made me that way” flew with God.
Our Church does not have a different set of rules for some and a different set of rules for others. We all have the same rules and suffer the consequences for not going along with them. We don’t get to interpret the rules. God gave us the Magisterium to interpret the rules so we wouldn’t be wandering all over the map, all heading in different directions.
I think what your Protestant friends may want is someone to say that they are right to be Protestant. While we do share some truths with the Protestants, they do not have the complete faith and God does want them to be in the Catholic Church. He doesn’t want them to “protest” the fullness of the Faith. To answer your question - Yes, Catholicism is the only way to find fullness in the Faith. While grabbing your Protestant friends and banging their heads against the wall is probably not the best way, we also cannot deny that the Catholic Church is the One True Faith.
Why are we right and they are wrong? Quite simply they have rejected the Church that Christ established. They pick and choose what they want to believe based on what they want to do in their lives.
I’ve worked with Protestants since I was 16 in the pro-life arena. I love finding common ground because many conversions to the Church have come from doing this. I’ve seen people who hated the Catholic Church because what their Church has taught them about Catholics come to love us because we were able to dispell their misconceptions. This would have never happened without finding some common ground.
That said, the word “tolerate” bugs me to death. There’s not one place in the bible where Christ teaches us to tolerate anything separating us from Him. Protestants are separted from Him in some aspects whether we like it or not. I do have hope that someday this will be resolved but it won’t be by denying articles of the One True Faith.
Gotta take a nap!
and i think ahimsam answered it perfectly for me. thank you.
!